Mapping the Commons

INDEED, I will update the info now and also ping ppl on the list.

@rubyvanderwekken @albagrandevazquez @silkehelfrich @ismaelsene @rutecorreia thanks this is hotting up as a discussion. I personally have attempted a few maps using the technology described above and am really keen to discuss the politics of mapping.

I'm a curator of art projects from New Zealand. Our country was named and mapped only in the last 200 years; mapping has really helped with the industrial post-enclosure movement to achieve private property objectives. Many Maori in New Zealand lost their land because it was able to be measured in this way and others therefore refuse to allow the boundary pegging of the surveyors! Some people regard any kind of cartography or mapping as a colonial project. So the kind of questions I'd like to discuss is
a) what do we mean by mapping?
b) Is it possible to have maps that encourage access but do not define boundaries?
c) is there any benefit in having commons unmapped ?

Sophie, your post reminds me of the fact that only recently an initiative in our corners did not want to join our (solidarity economy) map, since our timebank which became the subject of taxation guidelines is also on the map.. Far fetched one might say, but yes.. also that side to a map.

Your questions are very interesting, Sophie. Making a map is a quite forceful claim about (a particular version of) the truth, and it can have consequences for those who are "caught up" in the map. We were recently looking into mapping co-ops in a war-torn area of the world, and became very nervous about how such information could be used quite literally to target people. We have not made the map.
I am very sorry not to be able to come to Brussels. I hope it all goes brilliantly! I'd also like to keep in touch with others interested in mapping. I find TransforMap's discourse a good community. I'm there: https://discourse.transformap.co/users/mattw

Hi, I'd be very glad to participate, if possible
Daniela Festa
Best regards and see you soon

Hello everybody,

I would also be very happy to join, see you all soon!

Hei, thanks for the mapping meeting today at ECA, although cut-short or brief, it was good to sit together and see who is interested in this topic.

In my comment towards the end I mentioned about how mapping also highlight /represent the gaps, of what is not mapped, and who is not in the map.. I also mentioned 'appropriate networking' and potential of mapping to represent layers of the commons (local, municipal, national, regional), as well as to promote new representations of the commons, for example, ecogeographic or bioregionalism.

Fortunately for me, and maybe for you, I can offer a link to a text I wrote recently which summarized this perspective, from the context of my recent work in Helsinki and the Eastern Baltic Sea region with a cultural organisation & annual festival known as Pixelache Helsinki..

Ecogeographic Cultural Production? Appropriate Networking in Pixelache Helsinki & Network: http://whatdrivesus.net/andrew/

It was published recently online among a set of really interesting and valuable essays under the time 'What Drives Us' related to festival sustainability, which has a several perspectives on social sustainability in cultural production, but may offer something towards organising around the commons: http://whatdrivesus.net

Many thanks everyone for your sharing & comments in this ECA gathering.

i want join group